Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!mintaka!yale!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!gatech!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!gould!iwm From: iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk (Ian Moor) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: New Common TeX Message-ID: Date: 16 Nov 90 17:32:17 GMT References: <1990Nov4.000626.28089@portia.Stanford.EDU> <1990Nov10.174758.6811@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Sender: iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk Distribution: comp.text.tex Organization: Department of Confusion Lines: 29 In-reply-to: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu's message of 10 Nov 90 17:47:58 GMT In article pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: > >Note that Common TeX stil has the defect that in order to pass the trip >test is has to have the same grettable, verbose, ridiculous user >interface as Knuth's TeX. As soon as I get Common TeX 2.95 I will put in >a more Unixish user interface, conditionally compiled. Don't make it conditionally compiled, make it a run time choice. I like explanatory error messages! You might consider ed's `?' as the ultimate error messsage, but I would like some more help. Being able to enter corrections if there is an error near the end of a long document is very convenient. By all means accept tex -r for rude (i.e. nothing but ?) and -t for terse messages. I don't want to criticize the author of Common TeX, but surely the same effort could have produced a good portable optimizing Pascal compiler for Unix, and thus all the tools written in Pascal, not just TeX. -- Ian W Moor ARPA: iwm@doc.ic.ac.uk JANET: iwm@uk.ac.ic.doc Department of Computing, Lecture: The transfer of information from Imperial College. the lecturer's notes to the students' 180 Queensgate without passing through the brains of London SW7 UK. either.